Funny, it was only the other day we were chuckling at the thoughts of how hard man George Graham would deal with Stanley Collymore's curiously lax approach to his life as a professional footballer when we spotted a story in The Sun that claimed Stan was on the verge of a free transfer from Aston Villa to . . . Spurs. Surely that's as ridiculous, we thought, as Newcastle being linked with yet another goalkeeper, having already `inquired' about Farid Mondragon, Magnus Hedman, David Seaman, Mark Bosnich, Nigel Martyn, Mark Schwarzer, Neil Sullivan, to name but seven. Then we opened The Daily Mirror to discover that Bobby Robson had `watched' Porto goalkeeper Vitor Baia in the Champions League on Tuesday night.

Arsene Wenger is also goalkeeper-hunting, we're told, showing an interest in Kasey Keller, who moved from Leicester City to Rayo Vallecano during the summer, but may need to do a spot of midfielder-shopping in the near future if we can believe talk of Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit moving to Italy in January. Meanwhile Don Hutchison, according to The Star, has been told by Everton that they don't have the money to offer him a new improved contract so he'll probably join Liverpool or Spurs in a £4 million deal, £6 million less than Barcelona's Luis Enrique will cost Chelsea when he moves to Stamford Bridge in the not so distant future (say The Sunday People).